


Psychosomatic

by beer_good



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Clairvoyance, Episode: s05e15 A Hole In The World, Multi, Pre-Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Vampires kill people, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:15:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21609673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beer_good/pseuds/beer_good
Summary: Vampires, by definition, are dead. They really don't need to breathe. In fact, there's a lot of things they technically don'tneedto do. Funny how they still do them. Here are five vignettes about Spike through the ages, starting and ending at the end of "A Hole In The World".
Relationships: Spike/Angel, Spike/Angelus, Spike/Drusilla
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48
Collections: Buffyverse Bingo





	Psychosomatic

**Title:** Psychosomatic  
 **Author:** Beer Good   
**Fandom:** Buffyverse (post-"Hole In The World")  
 **Characters/Pairing:** Spike/Angelus, Spike/Drusilla, Spike/Angel  
 **Rating:** R-ish  
 **Word count:** ~1570  
 **Summary:** Vampires, by definition, are dead. They really don't need to breathe. In fact, there's a lot of things they technically don't _need_ to do. Funny how they still do them. Here are five vignettes about Spike through the ages, starting and ending at the end of "A Hole In The World".  
Written for **buffyversebingo** and the prompt "Need".

_"Spike drew an unnecessary breath."_  
\- Approximately 7,491 fanfics

**Psychosomatic.**

He doesn't need to breathe. He knows that.

1865  
Once, when William's mum was still healthy enough to travel, she took him to visit some relatives in the country. He didn't like it. The children were noisy and rough, the adults laughed too loud, the birds wouldn't stop singing, but there was an eerie silence underneath it that made every noise stand out, and strange smells that made him sneeze. Something about the wide open fields unnerved him. Being able to see for miles, with no snug corners or walls, with just the sky above him, just seemed too much. When his mother asked him if he'd enjoyed the trip, he said he had, thank you, but he was secretly relieved to be back in London, the quiet sitting room where he could hear the clock ticking, hear his mother cough in the next room, tune out the noise of the city to a constant, safe background hum and breathe free. William never left London again for as long as he lived.

* * *

1880  
The first few months after he met Drusilla, Angelus and Darla were a roar, and he roared back. They called it the whirlwind, and he threw himself into it, killing, drinking, fighting, fucking, every conceivable experience, taking it all in through senses that made him think he'd been blind and deaf and starved for his entire life. The sheer noise and colour and stink and taste of London, the way the city seemed to assault his every pore and fill him up every waking moment, how he could make out every heartbeat in a crowd, hear every individual scream and curse, feel and taste the difference between every neck he drained, every detail of the others' bodies. All the fat, skinny, tall, short people ... How had he never noticed all this before?

But Angelus was muttering about outstaying their welcome (as if all the people they could kill would even make a dent in this city), and Dru was promising him a whole world of new excitement, and so they rattled and shook in a coach out of London. Until it stopped for the night and they could pull back the curtains, he was still in London, the noise and smoke still hanging in the air. Then he stepped out onto the road, the gravel crunched under his feet, and ...

He remembers standing on a hill somewhere in Wessex, overlooking a few sleepy farms, and there was NOTHING here. He could hear the nothing between the few sounds there were - the wind through the trees, the sounds of a family (husband, wife, three young children) sleeping at the farm a few hundred yards away, the terrified heartbeat of the outwardly indifferent coachman Drusilla had hypnotised to drive them ... But all the sounds were so isolated, contrasted with nothing else, there was so much silence and emptiness under the moon that he wanted to scream. He didn't realise he was taking deep, gasping breaths until Angelus walked up behind him, snuck his hand around his throat and squeezed. "You know you don't need to do that, don't you, boy?" Spike felt teeth graze his neck as Angelus grasped his cock, and kept gasping for air as much to annoy the bastard as because his body told him to. If he struggled, if he fought before he gave Angelus what they both wanted, it wasn't because he didn't enjoy it. Get the blood pumping, in a manner of speaking. If he couldn't make the bugger pant, at least he could make him groan. Work up an appetite before they got to turn that farm into screaming.

Anything but this silence.

* * *

1938   
_"I got to keep movin', I got to keep movin', blues fallin' down like hail…"_

He cranked the car radio over the thunder of the V8 engine. Say what you want about people, but they got some things right. He can't believe they made it so long without cars, without things that make those long stretches between towns both shorter and, well, noisier. Especially now that cars came with radios and you occasionally found a station that played something besides sermons and church music. Every now and then, even down south, you could find a thumping guitar and a singer who sounded like the devil himself was after him as they burned through the countryside.

"Turn it down, Spike. I can't hear her."

He looked over his shoulder at Dru and the girl in the back seat. "Sure you can, pet." In fairness, the girl had quieted down a lot after they'd both drained a few pints from her; the screams fading away to whimpers and drowsy pleas, but they were still clearly audible through the racket - the usual "please, I want my mother, why are you doing this, I don't want to die" stuff. That part wasn't really his cup of tea, but seeing Dru enjoy it very much was. He briefly considered stopping and climbing in the back with them, but there were only so many hours till sunrise and he didn't feel like spending another day out in the middle of nowhere listening to the engine cool down.

"She's dreaming about us, Spike. Waiting." Dru was still playing with the girl, but her eyes had that faraway look, seeing one of all those delightful surprises she always led him to.

The girl had been hitchhiking, a runaway. Hadn't even tried to get out when Dru started getting forward with her; wanted to believe they were Bonnie and Clyde reborn. Until the teeth came out, as usual. "Just don't keep her waiting too long. We don't want a half-dead girl waving down the coppers when we get to town. Remember Atlanta?"

"Not her. Blonde little California girl. Half sun and half shadow, all. She's waiting, Spike, she…" There was something in Dru's voice as she reached out and stroked his neck with her bloody hand, making every hair on his body (and other parts of him) stand up straight. "So delicious, Spike, you'll love her. So full of …" She gasped. "...Fire. Spike, you have to promise me you'll kill her. For me? Please? You - "

"Anything you say, love." He reached back and caressed her wrist, hearing and feeling her purr. Califiornia, huh? Well, that was something to look forward to in a week or two.

_"I can tell the wind is risin', leaves tremblin' on the tree, mmmm..."_

The lights of a city burned on the horizon. He turned up the radio as high as it would go, the haunted blues singer's voice crackling with static and distortion as he put the pedal to the metal and the girl breathed her last under Dru's mouth. Three hours till sunrise, three hours till they got to sleep with warm bellies and the hum of unaware crowds, and wake up in a new city that wouldn't know what hit them.

* * *

1998  
He'd replay it all in his head, again and again. London, Beijing, Rome, New York, Prague, all those cities they'd made their homes for 120 years. All the noise, all the chaos, all the screams.

He could hear it all in his head.

Here and now, he could hear Sunnydale down in the valley below the mansion - not a huge city, and with sensibly empty streets after dark, but still.

He could hear his own bones crack as they knitted themselves back together, each individual fracture as it repaired itself.

He could hear the goddamn wheelchair squeak every time he tried to shift in his seat.

He could NOT hear Angelus and Dru's every move in the next room. Nope.

He wished he had a stereo, something to make more noise, but of course fuckin' Angelus hadn't paid the electricity bill.

He tried again to lift his right leg and hissed with pain. But at least a little less than yesterday. He took a deep breath and tried it again.

* * *

2004  
Now. He stands upon the bridge over the impossibly deep hole, screams into the well, needing to hear the echo. But it dies away among the countless graves and everything is quiet again as he stumbles after Angel out into the misty countryside.

They'd gone from LA to London to the Cotswolds, where the mist and the trees and possibly something very old has tuned out all noise. For all he knows, the entire world is gone and there's just him and Angel and a huge absence. There's no wind, no birds singing, barely even a whisper of grass bending as Angel falls to his knees and sobs over Fred and his own powerlessness to help her. So many people he chose not to murder for her sake, all those millions between here and there who would have been ripped apart by the old god on its way back to its grave, and will never know they came a push of a button from death … And none of them seem remotely real now, not here.

He holds Angel as sobs wrack his body, great big shaking breaths of desperation. Finds himself kissing his forehead, his neck, his mouth. Air passing between them as the distance between them closes. "Let it out, big guy. Let it out."

They don't need to breathe. They know that. But at least this way it feels like something's still alive.


End file.
